Essay Week 9: My Ideas About Education

Traditionally, schools were created to ensure that citizens of the United States were better educated and become productive members of society. I think we should go back to this model instead of the business model we currently use. I believe that we should learn basics for how to survive on our own. I remember classes like personal finance and single survival in high school, and I think those are a great idea. I also believe we should maintain basic math and English skills, as well. Although I don’t believe in a liberal education, I do believe that some aspects of it can be beneficial. For example, I think that requirements for math, English, and science should be honored. They enable people to develop basic skills to help them in the future and to better understand our world. I believe that students work better when they are working on subjects that they find interesting. I also think that standardized tests are not a viable option anymore. Students should receive grades based on knowledge they gained that should be measured through another means, like presentations or projects where they can show the knowledge they gained in their own creative ways. I really love Laura Gibbs’s experience in her fourth grade open classroom. I think this would be a brilliant idea to implement in a larger scale to see how this would affect learning. I especially agree when Laura says, “…We have replaced curiosity and passion with grading”. I know that when I was in school, I had to focus mainly on grades and don’t recall much from what I was supposed to learn because of this. Now, in college, I am constantly doing homework and unable to do extra reading about things that interest me because they have me taking classes that I don’t care for and have no true interest in, that require hours of my time to complete for a grade that seems irrelevant. If I were to teach, I would grade based on projects and presentations rather than test grades and quiz scores. There may occasionally be a quiz, but I would mainly want to ensure that my kids retain the information they learn and are able to apply that to something in their real life. I think this would cut down on anxiety over grades and encourage creativity.

This is not what I want my children and future generations to look forward to:

 Hours of sitting and listening to lectures about subjects they are not interested in. Not retaining any knowledge and learning skills that are not necessary for them and, most of the time, will not help them in their life. 

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